Among the Living Again

February’s American Renaissance conference was a success by any measure: Its first-rate lineup of speakers attracted the largest-ever turnout and intensive press coverage, as well as the added entertainment of several dozen ragged demonstrators. With more than 300 people in attendance, there was a palpable feeling that we are part of a growing movement, and sustained media coverage added to the excitement. More than a dozen organizations, including the Associated Press, the Washington Post, and several local television stations reported on the meeting, and two different documentary film crews interviewed speakers and audience members. Even the Jewish weekly Forward wrote about the views of Jews who attended the conference.

The conference began on Friday evening, Feb. 24, with a cocktail reception followed by welcoming remarks from the AR staff. Stephen Webster, assistant editor, delighted the audience by reporting that he had met his wife at the previous conference, and introduced her and their six-month-old baby girl. Ian Jobling, the website editor, noted that amren.com is now one of the 20,000 most popular sites in the world and that the mainstream media are starting to quote its commentary on news stories. Jared Taylor summed up the unique atmosphere of the gathering by quoting a man who attended a previous conference: “It’s great to be among the living again.”

Nick Griffin, chairman of the British National Party, led off the conference Saturday morning with an account of his January trial for incitement of racial hatred for saying, among other things that Islam was a “wicked, vicious faith.” He was acquitted on two counts but will be tried again on two other counts on which the original jury could not reach a decision (see AR, Feb. 2006, “BNP Wins Round One”). He congratulated his associate, Mark Collett, who stood trial with him, for his cleverness in outwitting the prosecution; the two so overwhelmed the crowns lawyrs that by the end of the trial they were “preaching from the pulpit” in the courtroom. Mr. Collett joined Mr. Griffin on the podium to enthusiastic applause. Mr. Griffin noted that thousands of people had signed an online petition protesting the trial, and warmly thanked his supporters.

“If they want to throw the cloak of martyrdom around me, that is their problem, not mine.”

While Mr. Griffin and Mr. Collett were saved by “the common sense of an English jury,” Mr. Griffin mentioned several people who have not been so lucky. A Glaswegian named David Wilson, who distributed fliers about immigrant attacks in his city, was fined, and jailed for six months. Jail cost him his house and family, but he was vindicated in the most horrible way. A Muslim gang kidnapped a 15-year-old Glaswegian named Kriss Donald, and burned him to death. They mistook him for a member of a rival white gang.

Mr. Griffin noted that if he is found guilty on retrial, he could still face up to seven years in prison. “If they want to throw the cloak of martyrdom around me, that is their problem, not mine,” he said, adding that another trial was another opportunity to tell the British people the truth about what is happening to their country. He argued that in Europe it is necessary to risk prosecution because repressive laws and the fear of Muslim violence make it increasingly difficult to criticize Islam. He noted that Jews, who have often supported immigration, are beginning to rally to white nationalists who oppose Islam. He added that Britons need to fight the Islamic presence in their midst rather than wasting their efforts in Iraq. Young people, he said, are much more nationalist than their parents generation, and this suggests a bright future for the BNP.

Andrew Fraser at the podium.

Next to speak was Andrew Fraser, a former professor of public law who was suspended last summer from teaching at Macquarie University in Australia for defending the “White Australia” policy and for insisting on the reality of race differences. In his talk, “Reinventing a Responsible Ruling Class,” he argued that the West must return to the republican tradition in which governing elites are loyal to their people and to past and future generations. Todays rulers are an arrogant, exploitative class of managers who have no sense of ethnic ties, and are therefore willing to let in alien populations.

Prof. Fraser proposed specific policies to make citizenship more akin to family membership. He argued that the vote should be granted only to heads of households, and that each head of household cast a number of votes equal to the number of people in the household. This would give families with children greater power in elections, and force rulers to consider the interests of future generations. The law should give greater weight to precedent, thus enforcing respect for past generations. Whereas lawyers used to be a natural aristocracy of civic-minded statesmen, they are now motivated by profit. One way to give lawyers more civic spirit and make the profession more independent from corporate interests would be to let lawyers elect judges. Prof. Fraser added that the proper role of the churches and universities, which are now at the forefront of the multiracial revolution, is to give society a sense of ethnic identity and of ties between the past, present, and future. He concluded by hoping for the return of the “old-time civil religion that once fused the history and destiny of our people with the realm of the sacred.”

Afrikaner novelist and commentator Dan Roodt spoke of the plight of whites in South Africa, noting that their precarious position under ANC domination may presage what is in store for the West. He reported that 30,000 to 50,000 whites, including 1,600 farmers, have been killed in South Africa since 1994. Some blacks are clearly killing farmers out of pure race hatred — they torture them to death and steal nothing. There is a persistent rumor that upon Nelson Mandelas death, blacks will slaughter whites in a Rwanda-style genocide. Such intentions are already manifest. Mr. Roodt showed a slide of a group of demonstrators in Pretoria chanting “Kill all whites — English and Afrikaans!”

Because of racial preferences, young whites cannot find jobs and are emigrating. This could lead to disaster, since whites make up the great majority of the educated workforce — for example, all but two percent of accountants are white. Anti-white legislation shows up in curious places; Dr. Roodt gave as an example a law that prevents whites from holding majority ownership in casinos.

Low birth rates will reduce whites to an even smaller minority while high taxes — whites pay 80 percent of all taxes — continue to crush them. Dr. Roodt fears that the anti-white South African revolution of 1994 will be exported to the rest of the world, just like the Communist revolution of 1917, pointing out that the UN has called for the end of “global Apartheid.” However, there is some hope for a white awakening. He cited the protests last year against changing Pretorias name to Tshwane.

South African whites must form a single political body, establish their own media, promote their own interests, and counter academic and media propaganda if they are to regain sovereignty. Above all, said Dr. Roodt, whites must assert their cultural identity, adding, “Hearing Beethoven in the bush may be more important than hearing it in Berlin.”

BNP Chairman Nick Griffin takes notes.

AR editor Jared Taylor described his thoughts on how to convince people of the reality and importance of racial differences. It is wrong to think liberals are motivated by ill will toward whites; Mr. Taylor said he himself was once a liberal. There are two key assumptions behind the liberal view on race, and if we successfully attack them, we can change peoples minds. The first assumption is that there are no racial differences in intelligence or personality, and the second is that all racial differences in crime rates, school achievement, income, etc. are due to “racism.” Mr. Taylor argued that whites cannot take the simplest measures to ensure their own survival unless they free themselves of “racist” guilt, and can free themselves of guilt only when it is widely understood that race differences rather than “racism” hold back blacks and Hispanics.

Mr. Taylor noted that many “conservatives” know the races are different but refuse to say so openly, adding that he has more respect for liberals who believe in equality than for conservatives who only pretend to. Some conservatives say they are afraid blacks would blow up and riot if race differences were widely discussed. Mr. Taylor said he has spoken to racially-mixed audiences about race and IQ, and found that blacks respect whites who are honest about race. Another argument for hiding the truth about race is that it would demoralize blacks. Mr. Taylor said blacks may have been happier in the 1950s, when racial differences were taken for granted. In any case, blaming the failures of blacks on racism keeps them from growing up and taking responsibility for their own actions.

A key to understanding liberals is that they place a high value on compassion and fairness. Democrats, for example, say they want to belong to the compassionate, charitable party. Racial arguments that appeal to fairness may therefore attract liberals. Just as other races and nationalities are encouraged to promote their own interests, whites should be allowed to promote theirs.

At the same time, liberals think they are superior to conservatives and certainly to “racists.” Mr. Taylor suggested that we can turn liberal vanity to our advantage. When they say whites are responsible for the failures of non-whites, liberals are saying that whites are autonomous but non-whites are puppets, for whom every failure has an excuse. “Liberals,” he said, “are what they most fear and despise — white supremacists!”

Phil Rushton during the reception.

After Mr. Taylors talk, the conference paused to reflect on the passing of Samuel Francis, who died in February 2005. Dr. Francis was a mainstay of AR conferences and American Renaissance, having spoken at every conference from 1994 to 2004 and published many articles in the magazine. The audience watched video clips from three of his speeches at past AR conferences, including the 1994 talk that got him fired from the Washington Times. Sam Dickson, Paul Fromm, Frank Borzellieri, and Jared Taylor spoke of their admiration for his accomplishments, their gratitude for his friendship, and their sadness at his death. Perhaps the most moving tribute was that of Mr. Dickson, who dwelt on the price Dr. Francis had paid for following the dictates of conscience. He said Dr. Franciss untimely death brought to mind the words of the Psalm: “So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.”

After the remembrance of Dr. Francis, Gordon Baum gave an update on the activities of the Council of Conservative Citizens and Lou Calabro described the pro-white efforts of his organization, the European/American Issues Forum.

The after-dinner speaker Saturday evening was University of Western Ontario psychology professor J. Phillippe Rushton, the world’s foremost scholar of race differences, who spoke on “New Research in Sociobiology.” Dr. Rushton began with an introduction to genetic similarity theory, which explains why people are attracted to people like themselves. Spouses and friends show considerable similarity in IQ scores, social attitudes, physical attributes, and personality characteristics. He brought the point home by showing slides of pairs of friends and married couples and inviting the audience to observe how much they looked like each other. He even speculated that physical similarity might determine how people choose their pets and showed several slides of astonishingly similar pets and owners, which provoked great hilarity.

Not only are people attracted to those like themselves, but the similarity is greatest in traits that are highly heritable. The attraction of like to like is what one would expect from contemporary evolutionary theory, which finds altruism among organisms that are genetically related; when you help a relative you help propagate the genes you share with him. If genetic similarity theory explains altruism among relatives, it helps explain ethnic fellow-feeling. It suggests ethnic nationalism is a natural sentiment, since fellow ethnics are genetically similar to each other, and have an interest in protecting and promoting the tribe and its unique genes.

Dr. Rushton concluded by pointing out that black/white intelligence differences are now widely recognized among behavior geneticists, and that articles analyzing these difference appear in top journals. He also briefly summarized the conclusions in Richard Lynn’s latest book Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis.

Practicing Tolerance

A number of groups protested the conference and put pressure on the Hyatt Dulles to cancel its contract to host the meeting. Long before registration day, students at George Mason University organized a phone campaign to browbeat the hotel. The day before the conference, protestors from DC Anti-War Network (DAWN) leafleted the hotel to denounce AR and the Hyatt Dulles. They passed out fliers to people in the lobby, put them under the doors of guest rooms on the first floor, and on the windshields of cars in the parking lot. Hotel guards eventually caught them.

Demonstrators. The sign says “No one is illegal.”

The flier was the usual hodge-podge of wild claims, and urged guests to complain to the hotel about the meeting and even to demand refunds. During the conference, DAWN, along with other groups like One Peoples Project and the George Mason University Anarchist Club, gathered on the sidewalk near the hotel driveway. Organizers claim to have had as many as three dozen protesters on the march. They carried signs saying “Stop Racism!” and “Change your name. You’re still the KKK,” and yelled things like “Go home, racists!” and “You forgot your hoods,” at people they thought were with the conference. They also continued to hand out fliers to hotel guests. In an interesting last-minute addition to the program, a police captain spoke to the AR audience urging restraint. Fortunately, there were no incidents.

Despite the pressure, the hotel stood firm: a spokesman for Hyatt said that while the gathering did not reflect the views of the corporation, “we do not discriminate against any of our guests or organizations with which our guests are affiliated.” AR is grateful to the Hyatt for its cheerful, courteous service under difficult circumstances.

Derek Turner, editor of the British magazine Right Now!, opened Sunday’s presentations with “The Island Race Debate: Britain Since the London Bombings,” in which he concentrated on increasing resistance to multiculturalism in Britain. The Bradford riots of 2001 and the Sept. 11 attacks stirred many Britons to wonder whether Muslims and other non-whites can be assimilated. Prime Minister Tony Blair responded by promising to deport all bogus asylum-seekers by the end of 2001 — a promise he did not keep. Rising concerns about non-whites in Britain have led to a spate of books on immigration and the establishment of Migration Watch, an immigration-restrictionist think tank that has been quite influential.

The press has taken increased interest in these matters. For example, newspapers closely covered the investigation into the death Victoria Climbie, an eight-year-old African immigrant tortured to death by an aunt and her boyfriend. Although British social services were alerted several times to abuse, they did nothing because they wanted to respect African culture. Newspapers have covered non-white crime and school failure heavily, and the magazine Prospect even published an article called “Does Britain Need Immigration?” refuting the view that the economy requires immigrants.

Derek Turner.

After the Queen told the nation diversity was a strength in her 2004 Christmas message, Buckingham Palace was inundated by complaints, and popular columnist Mark Steyn crystallized the growing discontent by calling multiculturalism a “suicide cult.” With the London bus and subway bombings of July 7, Britain realized it had a full-scale Islamic insurgency on its hands, and several churchmen joined the opposition. A Catholic cardinal said he would not want Catholic children attending Muslim schools, and an Anglican bishop said multiculturalism was preventing the British from appreciating their own culture. Opinion polls of Muslims inspired further doubts about them: 40 percent would support sharia law in Britain and 20 percent sympathized with the London bombers.

Mr. Turner concluded by noting that until now, “even the best of our leaders have been outthought by taxi-drivers and plumbers” when it comes to immigration and multiculturalism, but that encouraging examples of resistance show that Britain may finally be “awakening very slowly from a long, drugged sleep.”

French author Guillaume Fayes’ speech, “The Threat to the West,” warned that catastrophe is near. Western nations are threatened by degradation of the environment, exhaustion of resources, and economies founded on short-term speculation rather than long-term progress. At the same time, Europe is suffering from a radical demographic transformation. The six million Muslims in France now make up 10 percent of the population, and one birth in every three is to a Muslim. Fifteen percent of the population is non-white, and by 2020, Islam could be the largest religion in the country.

Jared Taylor interprets a question for
Guillaume Faye during the question period.

Speaking in a strong French accent, but with humor and enthusiasm that charmed the audience, Mr. Faye called the fall in European birthrates “ethnic suicide” or “demographic winter.” At the same time, whites suffer from “ethnomasochism,” or the “cultivated sense of guilt regarding ones own roots, ones ethnic identity and ones history.” “Xenophilia,” or the preference for things that are foreign over those that are native, and “homophilia,” or the prevalence of homosexuality over heterosexuality are also widespread. As a political entity, Europe has “no foreign policy other than the limp-wristed cult of human rights.”

All these signs of “devirilization” presage a decline of civilization similar to that of the Roman Empire, but more rapid. Mr. Faye predicted that economic, cultural and demographic factors will combine to produce economic collapse in Europe between 2010 and 2020. Muslim separatism will increase, and parts of Europe could come under Islamic rule. Mr. Faye predicted civil wars in France and a general assault on the white world, most of the time under the banner of Islam. Although this catastrophe is inevitable, Mr. Faye hoped it would wake up whites to their common destiny. He looked forward to the day when European peoples put aside their differences and unite at the level of race rather than nation.

In “A Benediction for Heretics,” long-time racial activist Sam Dickson brought the conference to a close, in his usual eloquent manner. Racially conscious whites are a small group, he noted, but many major political efforts have been started by small groups. He gave the example of the movement for Greek independence, which was launched by a handful of expatriate Greeks living in Odessa in 1814. Like us, these patriots were few and marginal at the beginning — so much so that they thought of giving up. Like the censors of today, the Turks imposed restrictions on what Greeks could publish, and suppressed not only political but scientific works. Even so, the Greeks were able to liberate their homeland from the Ottomans in just 13 years. Today, race realists face persecution for their views, and science continues to be a threat to tyranny. Egalitarians are losing the fight in the laboratory, with findings that support race realism making the news almost every day.

Sam Dickson delivers the benediction.

Mr. Dickson mentioned another, somewhat grimmer reason for optimism. He said the average white American has given up his freedoms, his pride in his history, and his culture. All he has left is his money, and the standard of living of the average American has declined since the 1950s: “When that money is gone,” he said, “the average American will have nothing!” This will be our opportunity.

Mr. Dickson noted that whites still have healthy instincts: they move away when the neighborhood turns brown and dont want their children to marry blacks. Whites must be taught that these are good, healthy instincts. In what was perhaps the best line of the conference, he said our job is to “put whites back in touch with their feelings.”

Although the idea of “tolerance” has been perverted into a weapon for white dispossession, a race realist movement must have a healthy tolerance in order to succeed. Mr. Dickson emphasized that our racial family is not limited to the middle-class or to people with college degrees or to heterosexuals: we are all part of one racial family and must treat each other accordingly. We must all work for the cause and for each other. He finished by reminding the audience there are far more race realists today than there were supporters of Greek independence in the early years, and that history can move with surprising speed.

Speeches were only one of the attractions at the conference, and for some, not even the main one. AR conferences are a unique opportunity for race realists to greet old friends and make new ones. There is nothing quite like the feeling of being in a room filled with hundreds of people who all understand. Everyone was clearly happy to “be among the living again.” Activists from all around the country and even the world mulled the global crisis over drinks in the lounge and cheeseburgers in the restaurant. They also took the opportunity to meet and speak to figures they had read about in the pages of American Renaissance and even the mainstream media like Nick Griffin and Andrew Fraser. The quality of the speakers and the conviviality of the company promise that the popularity of the conference will only grow.

The Press Claims Another Victim

The press coverage, though more extensive than usual, was typical of the superficial way the media treat racial heresy. Most of the stories focused as much on the protests as on the conference. The WashingtonPosts two articles were textbook examples of how to miss the point. A Feb. 26 article called “Promoting Preservation of Whites in Suit and Tie,” went into detail about how the conferees dressed and why, but did not contain a single quote from or summary of any of the talks.

The article had one very unfortunate consequence. It quoted Michael Regan, assistant district attorney in New Yorks Allegany County, on the effects of immigration policy: “You can see European Christian Americans are an endangered species.” Busy-body groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, complained to the DAs office. “Those kinds of comments are absolutely inappropriate for a public official,” said a spokesman. New York City Councils Civil Rights Committee added that “an assistant district attorney within the boundaries of our state who openly ascribes to a racist ideology is a threat to every minority citizen in New York State.” Julian Bond of the NAACP asked New York Governor George Pataki to investigate Mr. Regan for attending the conference. Mr. Regan was promptly fired. There has been some local talk-radio support for Mr. Regan, but he does not seem likely to get his job back. Needless to say, a Hispanic assistant DA who attended a meeting of the National Council of La Raza or MEChA would face no sanctions.

How the White Ethnics Assimilated

It is now required of liberal academics that they at least claim to believe race is not a biological category but a sociological delusion. To the extent they really believe this, it makes it hard for them to write about racial consciousness or racial attitudes. Virtually all of American history becomes a puzzle to them because, from the very beginning, it has been driven by a mass delusion that afflicted everyone from the founders down to the average white man of today.

Working Towards Whiteness is full of interesting information about how turn-of-the-century immigrants fit into American racial etiquette, but it suffers badly from the obligatory inability to understand race. Thus, David Roediger, chairman of the history department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, writes irritatingly about “the making of race,” of the “racialization of immigrants,” or about the “racialized neighborhoods” in which blacks live — as if the ghettos would have been tidy, middle-class suburbs if whites had not “racialized” them. Somehow, generation after generation, Americans “invented” race and forced each other into meaningless categories.

As the title of his book indicates, the equally meaningless problem Prof. Roediger tries to solve is how the 13 million “new immigrants” who came from Eastern and Southern Europe between 1886 and 1935 ended up being “racialized” as white. Later we shall see what prevents Prof. Roediger from seeing the obvious: they were treated as white because they were white.

Race and Ethnicity

During the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, Americans used the word “race” more loosely than we do today. Not only did people talk about the African and Asian races but also the English and French races. As Prof. Roediger notes, they often used odd, half-biological, half-cultural phrases like “the English-speaking races.” The expression “white ethnics,” he writes, did not become widespread until after the Second World War, and the most common designation for turn-of-the-century non-Nordics was “new immigrants,” which distinguished them from the Britons, Germans, and even the Irish who came earlier.

There is no doubt that the newcomers were different from the old stock. H.G. Wells worried in The Future of America (1906) that by welcoming the “darker-haired, darker-eyed, uneducated proletariat from central and eastern Europe” the country would develop “another dreadful separation of class and kind.” Prof. Roediger quotes a character from Sinclair Lewiss Babbit: “These Dagoes and Hunkies” would have “to learn that this is a white man’s country, and they ain’t wanted here.” This kind of loose usage is pretext enough for anyone who really wants to believe that the old stock did not realize Italians and Slavs were white.

And, indeed, there seems to have been a strong sense that Sicilians and southern Italians in particular were very alien, and if the pioneer stock ever did question whether some “new immigrants” were non-white, it was the dark-skinned ones who set them wondering. Prof. Roediger notes that one of the standard pejoratives for Italians — “Guinea” — comes from a term that was originally used for Africans, either to indicate which part of the continent they were from or to distinguish African-born from American-born slaves. Later, “Guineas” were mostly Italians but could be dark-skinned Greeks, Jews, Portuguese, or Spaniards. The old stock clearly did not care for them.

Somehow, generation after generation, Americans “invented” race and forced each other into meaningless categories.

In 1915, Irish dock workers left their jobs rather than work with “Guineas,” and as late as the 1960s, Italians were trying to get the word Guinea removed from place names. Jack London once wrote that “Dagoes and Japs” were the real enemies of Anglo-Saxon America. Socialist leader Eugene Debs said in 1891 that the Italian “fattens on garbage” and lives “far more like a wild beast than the Chinese.” One early 20th century novel referred to grand opera as “a bunch of greasers [singing] a lot of Dago stuff.”

“Italian” was, in some cases, a polite term for any dark-skinned person. The one black family that went down on the Titanic was lost to history for many years because it was described as “Italian” on the passenger manifest — as were several Japanese.

In some parts of the South, Sicilians were considered a very low breed. An Italian government worker investigating sharecroppers in Louisiana reportedly had a hard time persuading plantation owners that Sicilians were white. Southerners thought of them as a kind of light-skinned Negro who worked harder than the dark-skinned ones. Prof. Roediger reports that on a few occasions, Southern schools assigned swarthy Italian children to the black school rather than the white school. One 1922 Alabama anti-miscegenation prosecution led to a curious acquittal: The white offender, an Italian, was determined not to be “conclusively white,” so no offense could have taken place. Even in the North, some employers considered Italians to be the least desirable workers. Prof. Roediger cites an 1896 advertisement for “common labor” that offered the following daily pay: “white $1.30 to $1.50 ... colored $1.25 to $1.40 [and] Italian $1.15 to $1.25.”

H. G. Wells.

Needless to say, Italians themselves distinguished between light and dark. Northern Italians have long held that Africa begins at Naples, and parents used to tell their children to stop being Africani when they misbehaved. Even now, the Italian Lega Nord (Northern League) campaigns for political separation from the south.

There is no evidence that Slavs and what the Nordicists called the “Alpines” were ever treated quite like Sicilians. They ended up in the catch-all “Hunky” (from Hungarian) or “Bohunk” (from both Hungarian and Bohemian) category, and had a reputation as strong, dedicated, but rather stupid laborers. One steel worker explained to an industry investigator that “only Hunkies” worked at blast furnace jobs, because they were “too damn dirty and too damn hot for a white man.” In 1908, when a plant manager in Steelton, Pennsylvania, offered to move skilled “white” men to “Hunky” work, the men walked off the job.

Edward Alsworth Ross (1866-1951), perhaps the foremost American sociologist of his time, wrote that the new immigrants were “the product of serfdom” and the opposite of the “typical American citizen whose forefathers have erected our democracy.” He added that Slavs were “immune to certain kinds of dirt” and “can stand what would kill a white man.”

In some mining operations in the West, new immigrants were kept out of the white mens camps, as were Mexicans and Asians. At some sites, Italians had to share quarters with Mexicans.

Does all this mean, as Prof. Roediger suggests, that the old stock did not think the new immigrants were white? The language, religion, appearance, and bathing habits of the newcomers combined to make them alien and even repulsive, but sending a few Sicilians to black schools hardly meant people in the South thought they were actually Negroes. Protestants of British stock did not want to mix with short, dark Catholics, and it was convenient to park them in black schools, and the abortive 1922 anti-miscegenation prosecution is at best a historical curiosity.

As even Prof. Roediger himself recognizes, naturalization laws throughout this period specified that citizenship was open to “free white persons,” and no one ever argued that “Guineas” and “Bohunks” were unqualified. Other races were. In 1922, the Supreme Court ruled that Japanese could not naturalize because they were not white. The next year, a subcontinental Indian came before the court, claiming he was “Caucasian,” and therefore eligible. In earlier cases, the court had sought expert testimony from anthropologists as to who was white, but in the Thind case, the justices ruled that it was simple common sense not to consider Indians white. New immigrants from Europe were unfailingly admitted to citizenship.

The census bureau during this period counted new immigrants the same way. It classified the first generation and their children as “foreign-born white,” but counted the third generation simply as white. This reflected both scholarly and popular assumptions. As a 1932 study by Donald Young called American Minority People noted of the new immigrant, it was “dimly realized that in a few generations he will be absorbed into the total white population.” Young went on to say that the “white immigrant [is] patently handicapped by foreign language and tradition” but the “Negro now is looked on as more of a biological problem.”

The prominent sociologist Henry Pratt Fairchild (1880–1956), whom the author calls “racist” for his views of non-whites, took a haughty but different view of the southern or central European: “If he proves himself a man and ... acquires wealth and cleans himself up — very well, we might receive him in a generation or two. But at present he is far beneath us and the burden of proof rests with him.” Unlettered aliens would have to prove they could become American, and as Prof. Roediger notes, even the Italians found that if they renounced their foreign habits they were accepted. By 1920, scholars were generally predicting that European ethnics would assimilate. They were making no such predictions about blacks.

Labor Unions

Prof. Roediger goes into considerable detail about how labor unions treated the new immigrants. The American Federation of Labor did not like them, and some of its leaders wondered “how much more immigration can this country absorb and retain its homogeneity?” In 1902, AFL leader Samuel Gompers approved of literacy tests for immigrants because they would “shut out a considerable number of Slavs and other[s] equally or more undesirable and injurious.” One steel plant union man asked, “How would you like to shake hands with niggers and foreigners, and call them brothers?”

Henry Fairchild got it right.

Nevertheless, unions that were firmly closed to blacks were almost always open to white ethnics. In 1905, an Irish labor leader conceded, “However it may go against the grain, we must admit that common interest and brotherhood must include the Polack and the Sheeny.” Some unions drew the line at accepting non-citizens. Prof. Roediger reports that in the 1930s, one third of all members belonged to unions that excluded foreigners. Virtually all kept out blacks, as Samuel Gompers put it, as a matter of “self-preservation.” The CIO, on the other hand, had an anti-racist element that tried to organize around the slogan “negro and white, unite and fight,” but with little success. The Jewish-led International Ladies Garment Workers Union tried interracial organizing but newly-arrived Jewish immigrants in New York sharply resisted making common cause with people they called schwartzes.

The color line was always far more impermeable than the nationality line. In 1944, 1,500 UAW members went on strike because a new work arrangement required black and white women to use the same toilet. Prof. Roediger notes there could be union trouble if the coat racks were arranged so that blacks coats touched those of whites.

Housing patterns were another area in which new immigrants were clearly treated as whites and not like blacks or Mexicans. Before the Second World War, the “ghetto” was where new immigrants lived after arrival, but from an early period, ethnic concentration was voluntary. Unlike blacks, the Italians and Poles could move freely into old-stock neighborhoods and many did. New immigrants took pride in their communities, however, often showing higher rates of home-ownership than other whites. Social workers noted that they would buy a house “even if they have to starve their families to get the money,” and wondered if this were an extension of the peasant hunger for land. Blacks were different; the Negro quarter was often a wreck.

Waiting to be “racialized.”

Catholic ethnics frequently showed their love of community by building splendid churches, and Prof. Roediger writes that the clergy often joined in efforts to keep out Negroes. When blacks arrived in the 1960s, the bitterest part of white flight for many ethnics was turning their backs on the magnificent churches they had helped build.

Prof. Roediger gives an interesting history of restrictive covenants that likewise shows how smoothly new immigrants were “racialized” as white. In 1890, courts struck down covenants designed to keep out Asians, and they were banned again in 1917, on the grounds that they limited the rights of whites to sell property to whomever they wanted. However, they spread very rapidly after a 1926 Supreme Court decision found them constitutional.

It was not always a simple matter to institute covenants. Usually at least 70 percent of owners had to agree to them — no one wanted to be the only one to limit his resale rights — and it took organizing effort to get people in line. Covenants often expired after a number of years and had to be voted back onto deeds. This also took organizing, usually by groups known as neighborhood improvement associations. Many associations did nothing other than push covenants; keeping out non-whites was the single best step toward “neighborhood improvement.”

Prof. Roediger concedes that white ethnics were almost never kept out by covenant, and notes that even the early regulations of the Federal Housing Authority encouraged homogeneous neighborhoods. The realtors code of ethics likewise forbade sales to buyers who would hurt property values. “Guineas” and “Hunkies” did not hurt property values, and glided easily into covenanted housing. Prof. Roediger idiotically calls this “coerced incorporation as whites,” complaining that “new immigrant populations were poorly situated to enter multiracial initiatives” — as if they had to be forcibly dragged out of cozy neighborhoods full of charming blacks.

White On Arrival

This is the sort of nonsense people write when they pretend to believe race is an accidental designation that could easily go either way. For trendy loonies, therefore, it has become an academic problem to speculate about the manner and timing of how new immigrants were anointed as whites rather than something else. The thinking seems to be that in the home country they would have had no idea of race, and became “racialized” only in America. As Prof. Roediger explains: “U.S. realities were brutal, effective teachers of racial division and immigrants were ready learners.” In The American Dilemma, Gunnar Myrdal complained that race prejudice was “one of the lessons in Americanization.” Theoretically, if they hadnt been trained to “racism” by the old stock, new immigrants would have met blacks and American Indians and Japanese and not even noticed. In “racialized” America they were forced to notice, and found themselves designated “white on arrival,” a concept Prof. Roediger finds so useful and significant he abbreviates it WOA.

“White on arrival” or “white before coming?”
In other words, were they bad before they got here
or did American make them bad?

The following paragraph from Working Toward Whiteness is worth studying:

“A possible reading of the WOA characterization would be that new immigrants were white before coming (WBC) and therefore carried racism in the cultural baggage that they brought across the Atlantic. Recent scholarship rightly taken up with the drama of immigrants learning the ‘lie of whiteness’ in the United States, has been slow to consider this possibility.”

If race is a delusion, there has to be some explanation for why so many people are deluded. The fashionable view is that Americans are actively recruited into the “lie of whiteness.” Prof. Roediger is offering the shocking possibility that new immigrants might actually have been white (and therefore “racist”) before they got to America — “white before coming!” He quickly backs away from this heresy, however, and insists that new immigrants must have learned “racism” after they got here: “Much more difficult to interpret,” he writes, “are immigrant sources reporting on early encounters with African Americans,” who found blacks to be “utterly beyond imagination in European frames of reference.”

One Pole wrote home saying, “If such a man were brought to your village then all people would run away from fear.” A Slovak woman going through Ellis Island screamed when a black porter took her bag. She thought he was a monkey. In Clevelands Little Italy, a woman who saw a black in the street for the first time ran home in a fright, shouting “Madonna Mia mi scanza” (“My Lady protect me”). There was a standard immigration story among Italians of meeting their first black and thinking the color could surely be washed off.

Why does Prof. Roediger find these accounts “difficult to interpret”? Because he insists on at least pretending to believe race is an illusion to which people succumb only after they have been “racialized.” Only a deluded academic could fail to understand the astonishment of a white person, before the era of television and press photography, meeting his first African. The brute fact of physical differences was a profound shock — and runs both ways. Even today, in remote African villages seldom visited by whites, children run away screaming when they see one. Poles and Slovaks may never have thought about race before they came to America, but once they clapped eyes on an African they understood it immediately. They didn’t have to wait for malevolent old-stock Americans to “racialize” them.

In fact, many Europeans did not live in a homogeneous, raceless world. Prof. Roediger concedes that nearly every European country had an underclass, whether it be gypsies, Jews, Slavs or Sicilians. W.E.B. Du Bois, the light-skinned American black, was often scorned as a gypsy or Jew when he traveled in Europe. Germans in America did not invent schwartze as a pejorative for blacks; the word came from Germany, where Ashkenazi Jews sometimes used it for Sephardic Jews as well as blacks. To his credit, Prof. Roediger concedes that the issue of “racialization” is a “messy” one, and that some people don’t seem to require much instruction in telling races apart (though he doesn’t mention it, infants can do it).

Confusion

The main problem for trendy academics is the belief that race is not biological but there is at least one other problem. They are confused by the fact that old-stock Americans disliked the new immigrants. Anti-racists like Prof. Roediger do not seem to realize that there is an infinity of reasons for looking down on people even of one’s own race. The old stock disliked the people coming down the gangways because they were illiterate, badly-dressed, spoke no English, stank of garlic, and professed strange religions — not because anyone thought they were not white. An Englishman who behaved like a Dago was not welcome in boardrooms or even living rooms either. Anti-racists are so obsessed with “racism” they can think of no other reason to make Italians bunk with Mexicans in mining camps.

In the end, it was entirely as Henry Fairchild had suggested: once the Sheenies and Bohunks made a little money, dressed properly, learned English and acquired good manners, they could go anywhere. It might take a generation or two, but the outcome was essentially preordained. New immigrants were not “working towards whiteness.” They were leaving behind their European peasant origins and becoming middle-class Americans. Only Ph.Ds stuffed with fashionable nonsense could be blind to the obvious.

Making a Difference

White Advocacy For the Rest of Us

by Steven Grant

For many racially aware whites, the realization of what we’re up against can be daunting. What makes things worse is a sense of helplessness — what can I possibly do? I have a full-time job, mortgage and kids, and can’t afford a high profile. But I’m tired of batting back and forth with the like-minded on the Internet.

There are several things that can be done to advance “the cause” without inviting torrents of unwanted attention. I discovered this several years ago after being denied an internship that excluded whites.

You do not have to be party to a case of anti-white discrimination in order to file a complaint.

Bewildered that my career was being blocked by multiracial madness, I contacted a nominally conservative group and asked what to do. File a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, I was told, and call us back if that doesn’t work.

I never had to call back. Filing the complaint was as easy as getting the local office’s address by dialing information, stopping in, and filling out the form. The process took months, but I eventually prevailed, and the company was forced to accept whites into the internship.

Of course, if you think your particular case of anti-white discrimination requires the services of a lawyer, please consult one. As recent events have shown, white plaintiffs can win discrimination cases, and this is gratifying even if you do not believe in anti-discrimination laws in principle. In my case, the do-it-yourself approach worked fine.

What is perhaps more important, you yourself need not be a victim of anti-white discrimination to take similar action. You can bring any potentially unlawful anti-white discrimination to the attention of the authorities. All it takes is a letter.

A missed opportunity.

If a local university that receives public funds has splashed its “Students of Color Job Fair” across the Internet — and helpfully added that you must be a “student of color” to participate — print out the web page and send it to a local, state or federal civil rights office and ask for an investigation. If the fair is then opened to whites, you may have helped a white student you’ve never met get a job. If not, you’ve at least put the university on notice that whites are keeping an eye on them.

Can the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation legally offer scholarships only to non-whites? Maybe, but that doesn’t stop you from writing a letter or calling the foundation to complain. Ask why Bill Gates doesn’t think poor white children in Appalachia deserve scholarships. Maybe Bill Gates doesn’t care about Appalachia, but the white person who answers the phone might have something to think about on the drive home.

Don’t underestimate letters. Most probably find their way into the garbage can, but some end up in the letters-to-the-editor section of the daily paper. I’ve seen pro-white letters in New York Newsday, The Washington Examiner, and other sizeable papers. The recipe for success, I’ve found, is to attack a reporter or columnist’s casual use of anti-white slurs. Sadly, this happens so often that opportunities are plentiful. Even a liberal journalist can’t help but see the unfairness of strict prohibitions on slurs against other groups while it’s OK to insult whites.

Meanwhile, the white couple sitting around the kitchen table with the paper will either agree wholeheartedly, or a seed may be planted in their minds: the idea of whites as a group with interests that are under attack.

I think I missed an opportunity months back with the release of the movie White Chicks, starring the black Wayans brothers. I should have stood outside the movie theater with a sign reading, “This Movie Insults White Women.” In my hyper-liberal neighborhood, people might have thought I was boosting feminism (and was thus untouchable), but meanwhile, some racial identity might have slipped through.

Another missed opportunity.

Actions like that, of course, are public, but there would be no reason to give anyone your name if you didn’t want to. Wear sunglasses if you think some troublemaker will take your picture.

You also need not give your name when you stand to ask a question after a public talk. After being tipped off to a presentation at a nearby college about “the uniqueness of the West,” I showed up, listened to the neoconservative speaker (who asserted that the West’s accomplishments compared to the rest of the world were accidental and had nothing to do with race), then stood up to comment. I offered the possibility that it’s the white race that makes the West unique. There was a murmur in the crowd, but no shouting or violence. And a roomful of college students heard the calm articulation of a different point of view.

For those who like to debate, but don’t care to do it face-to-face, try Internet chatboards. There are probably thousands of these, and many focus on conservative politics. The ones sympathetic to our point of view are well-known, but try establishing beachheads elsewhere. Those who’ve tried this know that in some cases something as (relatively) harmless as a link to American Renaissance can get you banned.

So, try stealth. Weigh in on other political topics so as not to look like a Johnny One-Note. Stay moderate. The longer you’ve posted, the more you’re “family,” and the less likely the moderators are to ban you. It’s like a mini version of life: gaining the general respect of the board will give your point of view on race all that much more worth. Then try working in the idea of inherent racial difference.

This is a short list, but the idea is to think of strategic and low-key ways to be an advocate for white interests. Be creative. Many readers may baulk, but look at how the left has been successful all these years — with many minor acts of resistance and demonstration, strategic lawsuits, and even a sense of humor.

Racially conscious whites are smart and driven, and I know they can return the favors, however small. If nothing else, it’ll make you feel like a human being.

A Blow to the Hate Crimes Myth

The prevailing view is that hate crimes are overwhelmingly committed by whites against non-whites. The two most famous racial hate crimes are the murders of James Byrd, who was dragged to death by whites in 1998, and of Emmett Till, who was murdered in 1955 for flirting with a white woman. Amazon.com sells no fewer than nine books about Emmett Till and two about James Byrd, and PBS has devoted documentaries to both men. Black-on-white murders that are just as clearly motivated by racial hatred are largely ignored.

AR has tried to give a more balanced picture. Our report, The Color of Crime, found that blacks are 2.25 times more likely to commit hate crimes against whites (including Hispanics) than the reverse. A recent report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), “Hate Crimes Reported by Victims and Police,” finds that hate crime perpetrators are even more lopsidedly black.

The Color of Crime was based on the only national statistics on hate crimes then available: the FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics. The FBI reports only those crimes police departments consider to be motivated by hatred, but the new BJS study, based on a broad population sample, asks victims if they thought hate was the motive.

Racial Mix of Hate Crime Perpetrators

The graph on the left is based on FBI figures, and the one
on the right on the Bureau of Justice Statistics figures.
Guess which one the media prefer to publicize?

The first major difference in results between the FBI and the BJS reports is the sheer number of hate crimes. The FBI says that in 2003 — the most recent year for which figures are available — the police categorized only 7,489 crimes as hate crimes. The BJS, on the other hand, found that from 2000 to 2003 there was an average of 210,000 hate crimes per year. Why such a huge difference? First, only 40 percent of the BJS hate crime victims reported the crimes, so the police never learned about them. Second, police designate a crime a bias crime only if they think they have enough evidence to prosecute it as one. The BJS report tabulates crimes that victims merely think were motivated by hatred, a looser and more subjective standard.

Which numbers are more likely to be accurate? The BJS is certainly on firmer ground. As we noted in The Color of Crime, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey, there are 844,000 interracial violent crimes reported to police every year, but the FBI reports that only 2,168 were motivated even in part by racial hatred (the previous figure of 7,489 includes non-violent crimes like intimidation and vandalism, as well as crimes against homosexuals, Jews, the handicapped, etc.). If the FBI is right, only 0.3 percent of interracial violent crimes have a bias motive. The BJS statistics suggest there are roughly 100,000 violent interracial hate crimes each year — approximately 12 percent of all violent interracial incidents. Given the racial animosity in the United States, this is a much more credible figure than the FBI’s 0.3 percent.

The most recent FBI report said 22 percent of perpetrators were black; the BJS study finds 40 percent were black, while 46 percent were white or Hispanic. (Hispanics are lumped in with whites when they are perpetrators. We can call this category W&H for “white and Hispanic”). This means any given black is 5.5 times more likely than a member of the W&H group to commit a hate crime. This multiple applies to both violent and non-violent crimes. Judging from disproportions in non-bias crime, the black/W&H multiple for violent bias crimes is likely to be larger.

According to the FBI, blacks are more likely than whites to be hate crime victims — and the press duly reports this every year when the figures come out. The BJS’s new numbers show the opposite: Nine of every 10,000 whites but only seven of 10,000 blacks are victims of hate crimes each year. Hispanics, who are distinguished from whites when they are victims, are as likely to be hate crime victims as whites. Judging from these rates of victimization, about 10 percent of hate crime victims are black. According to the FBI, 35 percent of officially-designated hate crime victims are black.

These substantial differences lend support to a long-standing race-realist suspicion: that even when the evidence of hate is equal, police are more likely to label a crime a “hate crime” when the perpetrator is white than when he is black. As American Renaissance has reported (see AR, Nov. 2000, “Hate Crimes 101”), police training materials on hate crimes portray whites as the exclusive perpetrators of racial hate, and police departments often appear to resist labeling blacks as hate criminals even when the evidence is strong.

The BJS numbers tell us furthermore that not only are blacks 5.5 times more likely than W&H to commit hate crimes, but that when black criminals commit violence, they are more likely than W&H criminals to be motivated by bias. Blacks commit 24 percent of all violent crimes, but approximately 39 percent of all violent hate crimes. The figures for W&H criminals are 62 percent and 44 percent. This means black criminals are more than twice as likely as W&H criminals to be motivated by hatred when they commit violent crimes.

Critics might cast doubt on the BJS statistics because they reflect victims’ subjective judgments of the motives of perpetrators; an angry victim might impute racial animus where none existed. However American society teaches blacks, but not whites, that other races are prejudiced against them, so it would be more likely for blacks to overestimate racial bias.

Jack Levin, a Northwestern University hate crimes scholar who is a major proponent of the whites-as-perpetrators view, finds the BJS report more credible: “It’s not necessarily completely accurate, but I would trust these data before I trusted the voluntary law enforcement reports to the FBI.”

The BJS statistics are a valuable addition to our understanding of crime, but leave out much that is important. They tell us the race of the perpetrator only for the total of all hate crimes, including those motivated by religion, ethnicity, sexuality, and disability, as well as race. Therefore, it is impossible to break out the racial makeup of victims and perpetrators in specifically race-motivated hate crimes. Nor does the report include finer data on perpetrators and victims of violent versus non-violent hate crimes. Finally, like so many other US crime reports, the BJS study breaks out Hispanics from whites only when they are victims and not when they are perpetrators. Because Hispanics commit virtually all crimes at higher rates than whites, lumping Hispanic perpetrators in with whites artificially inflates the “white” hate crime rate.

The new BJS report has not garnered anything like the press attention the FBI report gets every year. This is hardly surprising. The purveyors of anti-white racial propaganda have little interest in the facts.

O Tempora, O Mores!

Racist Candy

Alimentation Couche-Tard, Inc. is a Canadian company that operates nearly 5,000 convenience stores in North America, including the Circle K chain in the United States. In its Quebec stores, Couche-Tard sold a candy called Sloche strawberry-flavored gummie spiders, the label for which featured a cartoon of a black man with a giant spider on his head with legs like dreadlocks. Laurraine LeBlanc, a black woman, says she was shocked by the image when she bought candy for her three-year-old daughter. Miss LeBlanc says corporations should not “make money by using the images of black people in such a way” because it “reinforces the prejudices.” She complained to the company but got no reply, so she filed a complaint with the Quebec Human Rights Commission.

Couche-Tard originally stood behind the design, calling it attention-getting, “somewhat irreverent humor” aimed at teenagers who are largely indifferent to traditional advertising. It says it test-marketed the packaging with a group of teenagers that included blacks and Arabs, and no one objected. Earlier this year the company agreed to destroy the remaining stock of the candy, valued at $12,500, and make an $18,000 donation to a black youth group in Montreal. [Couche-Tard Candy Packaging Called Racist, CTV.ca, July 15, 2005. Pierre St-Arnaud, Controversial Candy Pulled, Canadian Press, Jan. 17, 2006.]

Another Hoax

We reprint the following item, verbatim and in toto:

“Ku Klux Klan fliers that were distributed in a Suffolk apartment complex last week came from a black tenant who wanted to shock young African-Americans, Suffolk police said Thursday.

“Fliers that have surfaced on doors at the Heritage Acres Apartments on Nansemond Parkway in Suffolk last week were not distributed by the white supremacy group. Tenants complained to police about the fliers, which contained a headline ‘KKK congratulates gang bangers for slaughter of black people’ and racially charged comments.

“In the wake of Suffolk’s recent brush with youth violence, the woman who distributed the fliers wanted to shock young black people in the area, police said.

“So far the woman is not being charged with a crime and may not get charged at all because of protection of freedom of speech, said Lt. Debbie George with the Suffolk Police department.”

While the overall violent crime rate nationwide appears to be at historic lows, many cities are seeing more murders. After peaking in 1991 and declining after 1993, the national homicide rate remained essentially flat from 1999 until 2005, when it rose 2.9 percent during the first six months; in the Midwest, it increased 4.9 percent. In 2005, San Francisco and Boston saw more murders than in any year in the past decade, and killings in Prince George’s County, Maryland, a largely black suburb of Washington, DC, were at an all-time high. Milwaukee, St. Louis, Kansas City, Tulsa and Philadelphia also saw a sudden jump in murders in 2005.

Police cannot attribute the rise to any single cause, such as the drug or gang violence that many blamed for killings in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Many murders arise form petty disputes. Milwaukee Police Chief Nannette Hegerty calls it “the rage thing.” In her city, for example, one woman killed a friend after they argued over a silk dress, a man killed a neighbor whose 10-year-old son mistakenly used his soap dish, and two men arguing over a cell phone took shots at each and killed a 13-year-old girl. Chief Hegerty says robberies are more violent, too: “Even after the person gives up, the guy with the gun shoots him anyway. We didn’t have as much of that before.”

The suspects and their victims tend to be young blacks with criminal records. They usually know each other, so the killing stays in the black neighborhoods. Downtown Milwaukee has not had a murder in five years, but in the black, north side of town, murders went from 57 in 2004 to 94 last year.

Police Chief Jim Corwin of Kansas City, Mo., where the murder rate in 2005 was well above the 15-year average, has a theory about “the rage thing.” He says young killers have no hope and no prospects. “If the only thing I have is my respect, that’s what I carry on the street. If someone disrespects me,” he explains, “they’ve done the ultimate to me.” [Kate Zernike, Violent Crime Rising Sharply in Some Cities, New York Times, Feb. 12, 2006.]

Quotas by Another Name

Although non-whites in Britain are more likely than whites to go to university — they are nine percent of the working population but make up sixteen percent of undergraduates — the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) thinks top universities are excluding them, especially blacks. Nine of the 19 so-called “Russell Group” of elite universities have fewer than 30 black students. Only one percent of the students at Oxford are black; at Bristol and Durham Universities, the numbers are .8 and .7 percent. According to one study, non-whites make up less than five percent of students at 53 of the country’s 165 universities, and blacks are less than one percent at 123 universities. The numbers are evidence, says CRE chairman Trevor Phillips, who is black, that universities are putting out “invisible messages of ‘no blacks need apply‘,” and that Britain is “sleep-walking” into segregation. Mr. Phillips acknowledges that some non-whites do poorly on top university entrance exams, but apparently thinks they should be admitted anyway.

Oxford: not enough blacks.

The universities deny discrimination — “Our policy of selection is based solely on academic merit and potential,” says an Oxford spokesman. While Mr. Phillips has so far ruled out admissions quotas, he wants the universities to take “positive action” to admit more non-whites. A CRE spokesman encourages universities to be “inventive in how they engage and support” non-whites. Non-whites are the majority at 11 colleges, mostly in the London area, seven of which were created after 1992. At London Metropolitan University, for example, 60 percent of the student body is non-white.

Non-white students are more likely than whites to study computer science, law and medicine, and least likely to study education and the humanities. [David Leppard, Universities Told: Balance the Racial Mix, Sunday Times (London), Feb. 5, 2006.]

Dishonor

Politicians in Chicago like to curry favor with prominent supporters by renaming a block or two of a street after them. There are now more than 1,000 honorary street designations citywide, and most sailed through with little notice or controversy. That isn’t the case with a recent plan to name one block of Monroe Street after former Illinois Black Panther state chairman Fred Hampton. Hampton, who urged his followers to “off the pig,” was killed in a 1969 shootout with Chicago police.

Alderman Madeline Haithcock sponsored the naming ordinance at the request of Hampton’s son, Fred Hampton, Jr. The younger Mr. Hampton is, himself, no stranger to violence, having been sentenced to 18 years in prison for firebombing two Korean-owned grocery stores in 1993. He got an early out, and now insists he was an innocent “political prisoner.”

The ordinance, which passed the city’s Transportation Committee without debate in late February, infuriated Mark Donohue, president of the Fraternal Order of Police. He says it is “a dark day” in Chicago “when we honor someone who would advocate killing policemen.”

“The Black Panthers were the first ones to start breakfast programs in the schools,” says Miss Haithcock. “I don’t think their purpose was to go out and destroy police officers. Their purpose was housing, education, clothing and justice. They fought racism and discrimination. That’s the part I was going on. Only the good things.”

Donna Marquez, the sister of a policeman who was gunned down in 2001, says Miss Haithcock “is saying [Hampton] did some good with the breakfast program. Well, so did John Wayne Gacy. He was a precinct captain and a clown for children’s parties before he killed all those boys. Do we give him a street name?” Bob Gordon, whose policeman son died when a drunk driver hit his squad car, says he would “lose all faith in the city” if Hampton is honored.

“If you read the history of Fred Hampton,” Miss Haithcock explains, “you won’t see anything that bad about him. All he said is he was going to defend himself against policemen. And evidently he didn’t because they murdered him.” She attributes the fuss to lingering racism, and says she will submit the ordinance to a city council vote in late March. [Fran Spielman, Street Name Sparks Outrage, Chicago Sun-Times, Feb. 28, 2006. Fran Spielman, Street Name: ‘Embarrassment‘ or Fair Tribute, Chicago Sun-Times, Mar. 1, 2006. Fran Spielman, Black Panther Street Fight Rages On, Chicago Sun-Times, Mar. 2, 2006.]

Hmandating Hmong History

In April 2005, Wisconsin Democratic state representatives Donna Seidel and Frederick Kessler introduced a bill in the state assembly to require that Wisconsin students be taught about the Hmong. Children would learn that the Hmong fought for the United States during the Vietnam War, were persecuted by the government of Laos, and were resettled in the US. Rep. Seidel says she and Mr. Kessler represent areas with large numbers of Hmong immigrants.

Poacher and murderer.

The bill has no chance of passing this year, but Hmong activists hope for better results next year. Cha Song Yang, executive director of the Hmong Mutual Assistance Association of Sheboygan says all students will benefit, but especially his people. “For the Hmong students themselves, they get to see the sacrifice their parents, or grandparents, or uncles made, putting their lives on the line for freedom. It would make them proud that their parents‘ generation contributed a great deal to the freedom of people in the world,” he says.

Nearly 18 percent of students at Sheboygan public schools are Asian, mostly Hmong. The school district already teaches about the Hmong in social studies, and assistant superintendent Diane Wilcenski wants Hmong history taught statewide. “It’s an important piece of our history,” she says. [Eric LaRose, Bill Would Require Lessons on Hmong, Sheboygan Press, Mar. 5, 2006.]

Will the Hmong lesson plan mention that the Hmong are a stone-age tribe that practices polygamy and child bride-theft, and have one of the highest rates of welfare use of any group in the country? Or that in Nov. 2004, Hmong tribesman Chai Soua Vang shot and killed six white Wisconsin hunters when he was caught poaching on private land?

Browning of America

According to a new study from the Pew Hispanic Center, the number of illegal aliens living in the United States has increased to 12 million, with 850,000 entering every year since 2000. Mexicans make up 56 percent of all illegals; Central and South Americans, 22 percent; and Asians, 13 percent. Six percent of illegal aliens are from Canada and Europe.

The study estimates that approximately 7.2 million illegals are employed, making them five percent of the US workforce. Illegals perform 25 percent of agricultural jobs, 17 percent of cleaning jobs, 14 percent of construction jobs, and 12 percent of food preparation jobs.

Study author Jeffery Passel says improved border security means only that Mexicans who make it to the US illegally stay longer. “The security has done more to keep people from going back to Mexico than it has to keep them from coming in,” he explains. [Stephen Ohlemacher, Estimate: Illegal Immigrant Population Hits 12 Million, AP, Mar. 7, 2006.]

How many are illegals?

From the 1960s to the 1990s, most immigrants who settled in the United States chose to live in the large “gateway” cities of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. During the same period, blacks were moving from the South to cities in the North and West. Between 1990 and 2004, the pattern reversed. More immigrants are moving to smaller — and whiter — inland cities, and more blacks are moving back to the South. That’s the conclusion of a new study, Diversity Spreads Out, written by demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC. “There is a broader sprinkling of all minorities away from traditional melting-pot places,” Dr. Frey says. “Minorities are becoming a part of the growth in fast-growing cities.”

Non-whites accounted for the majority of the population increase in the nation’s 11 fastest-growing cities from 2000 to 2004. For example, in Riverside, California, the second-fastest growing area during that period, Hispanics accounted for 65 percent of the growth, and in McAllen, Texas, the third-fastest growing area, it was 93 percent. Hispanics accounted for 47 percent of the population growth in Orlando, Florida, the seventh-fastest growing metropolitan region.

Fifty-six percent of blacks now live in the South, and the return is accelerating. Seventy-two percent of black population growth between 2000 and 2004 took place in the South, mostly in Texas, North Carolina, Florida and Georgia. The black population of Atlanta will soon be greater than that of Chicago.

Dr. Frey believes the movement of non-whites into areas with white majorities will continue. “It doesn’t mean these smaller cities are going to turn into San Francisco or Los Angeles. They will still have a higher white share,” he says, but “it does mean more of America is going to get a taste of the minority populations.” [Leslie Fulbright, Minority Populations Leaving Large Cities, San Francisco Chronicle, Mar. 7, 2006.]

Detroit’s Shadow

In the 1980s, a black Detroit drug gang called Young Boys Incorporated decided to use children as crack runners. If the police caught the mules, their age kept them from doing hard time. If the young couriers were never caught, they learned how to run a drug operation. The adults stayed in the shadows and collected the money the young dealers brought in. Young Boys Incorporated soon branched out to other cities in the Midwest and South. It recruited couriers locally, and forced out the competition.

Detroit drug gangs still use the basic blueprint of Young Boys Incorporated, but have added a twist. Instead of using locals, they send children from Detroit wherever they are needed. In New Castle, Pennsylvania, for example, police struggled for years to stop two Detroit drug gangs that had invaded their town. Because Detroit has so many dropouts and such a bad economy, the gangs always had plenty of willing foot soldiers. The youngsters, who delivered the crack to local buyers, were instructed to lie about who they were and where they were from when the police caught them. Because they had no local ties, police could not identify them. The gangs rotated in new couriers every few weeks to make sure they remained unidentifiable.

New Castle Police Chief Thomas Sansone notes a chilling aspect to this story of 14-year-old drug runners: [N]ot one of them was reported as missing or a runaway. These were kids nobody was looking for.” [Milan Simonich, How Detroit Gang Got to New Castle, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Mar. 5, 2006.]

Prisoners For Segregation

Racial violence continues in Los Angeles lockups. Between Feb. 4 and 28, there were more than a dozen brawls between blacks and Hispanics at the Pitchess Detention Center. There have also been racial fights at the Los Angeles Men’s Central Jail and in some of the county’s juvenile lockups. Two blacks have died in the violence, and more than 100 other prisoners have been injured. Outside Los Angeles, there were two race riots in San Quentin State Prison that injured 17 prisoners. [San Quentin Prison on Lockdown after Racially Charged Riot, AP, Feb. 25, 2006. Troy Anderson, Jail Riots Spread to L.A. County’s Juvenile Facilities, Los Angeles Daily News, Mar. 2, 2006.]

Officials say Hispanic gang members started the fights in retaliation for feuds between blacks and Hispanics on the outside. Prison groups like the Mexican Mafia are growing more powerful, and the conflict will only get worse, says one prison official. Hispanic inmates far outnumber blacks, and this emboldens them to go on the attack. Hispanic prisoners say gangs forbid association with blacks and require that they fight. One Hispanic inmate at Pitchess says, “If you give food to a black guy or a black guy gives his food to a Hispanic, you get beat up by your own people.” [Charles Ornstein and Julie Cart, Another Inmate Dies in Racial Fighting, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 13, 2006.]

Black activists want segregation. “Black inmates are begging us for help,” said Najee Ali of Project Islamic Hope. “They want to stay segregated and protected.” In fact, jail officials temporarily segregated inmates in one part of Pitchess, but later reintegrated them. California law allows racial segregation only in emergencies, and the prison system’s policy of segregating inmates who first come into the system was struck down by the Supreme Court last year (see “California Prison Segregation to End,” AR, May 2005). [Richard Winton and Sharon Bernstein, Racial Violence Breaks Out After Clergy-Media Jail Tour, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 10, 2006.]

Prison riots are only the most brutal form of conflict between blacks and Hispanics in Los Angeles. There is also a new wave of discrimination suits brought by blacks against Hispanics. Donnie Gaut, a black man with 12 years of warehouse experience, filed a discrimination suit against Farmer John Meats after he was turned down for a stocking job. The Equal Employment Opportunity Center found the company had an all-Hispanic hiring staff, and had been hiring Hispanics almost exclusively. Mr. Gaut and six other black applicants shared a $110,000 settlement. [Sharon Woodson-Bryant, Blacks vs. Latinos Tension Reaches Far Beyond Gangs, Jails, Los Angeles Daily News, Feb. 12, 2006.]

Abolishing Britain

The golliwogg doll is a popular caricature of a black boy that comes from a character in an 1895 children’s book. The “golly” went on to became the source of British slang for dark-skinned people: “wog.” The British jam manufacturer Robertson and Sons adopted the golliwogg as its mascot in 1910, but dropped it in 2001 after decades of complaints that it was offensive.

Donald Reynolds sells the dolls in his general store in Bromyard, Herefordshire. Business is brisk; many of his customers had gollies as children and are delighted to see them again. On Feb. 12, however, police told him they had received a complaint about the dolls, and they seized the three in his store window on the grounds that they caused “alarm, harassment, or distress” under Britain’s Public Order Act. Although it is legal to sell the dolls, police warned Mr. Reynolds that displaying them could be a crime. Mr. Reynolds says, “When I realized what the police wanted with me, I thought, this is society gone mad.” After three weeks of investigation, a police spokesman announced, “No offences have been identified and the items will be returned. Suitable advice about the sensitivities of placing such items on display is being provided to the store owner.” Now that he has them back, Mr. Reynolds intends to auction the “Jailbird Gollies” for charity. [Wikipedia entry, “Golliwogg.” Simon de Bruxelles, Golly! Three in Trouble for Offense, Times (London), Mar. 4, 2006.]

Children at two day care centers in Oxfordshire are learning a new version of an old song: “Baa baa, rainbow sheep.” The manager of the centers explains, “This is fairly standard across nurseries. We are following stringent equal opportunities rules. No one should feel pointed out because of their race, gender or anything else.” Last year, a school in Aberdeen changed the lyrics to “Baa baa, happy sheep,” and in 2000, the Birmingham City Council tried to ban the rhyme, but gave up after black parents said the ban was ludicrous. [Alexandra Blair, Why Black Sheep are Barred and Humpty Can’t be Cracked, Times (London), Mar. 7, 2006.]

Last October, the Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council told all workers in its benefits office to cover up any depictions of pigs, lest they offend Muslims. The ban included a tissue box featuring Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. In September, Burger King withdrew ice-cream cones from restaurants in Britain after a Muslim complained that the design on them looked like the Arabic symbol for Allah. [Mark Steyn, Making a Pig’s Ear of Democracy, Telegraph (London), Oct. 4, 2005.]

Sir — What a chilling account James Hendrickson gave us in the March issue of what it was like to be a white man in the New Orleans Superdome after Katrina hit! I recall that in the weeks after the disaster, AR, along with other publications, stepped back from some of the more lurid things reported shortly after the hurricane. Mr. Hendrickson’s diary suggests that everything we heard in the early days was true.

It is significant that even though they tried to downplay it later, media executives everywhere had no trouble believing blacks were capable of abominable behavior. This is part of the great irony of how Americans think and talk about race. Officially, we are supposed to believe blacks and Hispanics are on their way towards middle-class respectability, but even the most determined liberals easily assume the worst about them. Americans seem to be capable of thinking two opposite things about race at the same time. That is why nothing has changed, even though the whole country heard about what happened in New Orleans, and a few unlucky whites had to live through it.

I used to think forced integration would be a good thing in the long run, because it would ensure that millions of Americans got enough of a whiff of what Mr. Hendrickson went through to give them a sound racial consciousness for life. Maybe I was wrong. Whites seem to have an infinite capacity to know — and even experience — the truth and yet live in denial of it.

Carl Hunt, Ann Arbor, Mich.

Sir — James Hendrickson’s “Katrina Diary” in the March issue was very informative. However, while we European-Americans can expect to be harassed in racially-mixed disaster shelters, as he was, I am afraid we cannot count on the support of other whites. In fact, if I get into a confrontation with an aggressive panhandler, pervert, or other non-white thug, I move away from other whites. In a racially-mixed city like San Francisco, I know I am not going to get help from other whites even if they think I am in the right. By moving away from whites, you reduce the number of people you may have to defend yourself against in a confrontation because whites will turn on you out of fear.

It is with this in mind that my household is preparing for the next big earthquake. If our house is too badly damaged to stay in, we will camp rather than evacuate to some place like the Cow Palace, which is the closest thing we have to the New Orleans Superdome.

I think whites should not seek help from rescue workers but hide from others seeking help until the more politically correct ethnic groups are evacuated. You will be safer away from the criminals, who will hurt you for being white, while the rescue workers, who will most likely be European-Americans, are so afraid of being called “racists” they will come for you last. My family will hide out with essential supplies, away from retail districts that are sure to attract looters.

Mary Simas, San Francisco, Calif.

Sir — February was Black History Month, so it was appropriate for AR to publish Jared Taylor’s review of The Fate of Africa by Martin Meredith. Recent African accomplishments include tribal warfare, destruction of infrastructure, economic mismanagement, embezzlement of foreign aid, and rampant AIDS. These can now be added to the invention of the digging stick and cultivation of the yam.

Phillip Blood, Worthington, Ohio

Sir — It is both encouraging and discouraging to know there was such serious intellectual resistance to Brown v. Board of Education (“The Fight Against Integration,” March 2006). Encouraging because it is heartening to know good sense did not go down without a fight — Thomas Jackson is right to point out that the dedicated work of the early race realists has been written out of the history books. Discouraging, though, because resistance failed even at a time when it had more support and better chances of success than now.

I take consolation, however, in the fact that in the 1950s and 1960s egalitarians sold integration and anti-discrimination on the claim that it would turn the downtrodden Negro into a carbon copy of the white man. This has proven to be fantasy. Everything Lyndon Johnson wanted and everything Martin Luther King dreamed of has been tried, but we are farther than ever from the racial Garden of Eden we were promised. Race realists now have the clearest possible record to which they can point — and I suspect that in their bones even the liberals now know egalitarianism has failed.

Helen Turner, Jackson, Miss.

Sir — Thank you for sharing with me an advance copy of Stephen Webster’s article that references James Izrael (“The Hate Speech Double Standard,” March 2006).

Please be advised that Mr. Izrael is not an editorial writer as described in the article. He does not write editorials, which speak for the newspaper.

He is an editorial assistant, meaning he handles letters to the editor and op-ed submissions. He also occasionally writes first-person opinion pieces in which he is speaking for himself, as are all signed articles.